Thought Garage

This is the picture of an Amazon Kindle, I enjoyed for a really very short time before returning it today. May be a remarkable gadget on its own and may have been the most popular product on Amazon, but I found in a short amount of time I held it in my hands that its not for me. After spending a significant amount of time on my first generation iPad, Amazon Kindle felt like a feather, almost weight less. Give it to contrast theory.  But that was the only thing I really liked it. It is much smaller than it looks. Its Paper like screen, crisp font and little keyboard are nice but nothing impressive. I normally don’t go to a beach or sit in the backyard and read books in broad day light. I wish I could. But with a toddler in the family, only time you get to skim through a book is once kids go to bed. So, ability to read in a broad day light isn’t a feature for me. Moreover, lack of backlit display was indeed a big drawback. May be if you are reading colorless fiction, its black an...

You may have looked at so many different numbers about the world or read news reports, watched umpteen TV Shows, but nothing explains the deeper connections between the health and wealth of a nation like this inspiring talk by Hans Rosling .

Many say wealth can’t make you healthy. Wealthy people aren’t necessarily happy people around the world. But you will be totally blown away by what real numbers have to say. Watch this 4 minute video where a history of 200 years of 200 countries crunched into 4 minutes to show how wealth and health are totally related and complimented. Instead of studying history for one year at the university, you can watch this video for less than five minutes.Income per person (GDP per capita) is adjusted for inflation and for differences in costs of living (purchasing power) across countries. You can play with the data yourself in Gapminder World . This is a short clip from the longer film The Joy of Stats ©Wingspan Productions for BBC, 2010.

David, aka DHH of 37signals that also created the most coveted web frameworks of the day Ruby on Rails , delivers this revelation of making money online : have a price and charge your customers . ( Startup School , 2008) The blog of 37signals called ‘ Signal vs. Noise ’ is my favorite and source of inspiration for my own entrepreneurial journey. 

Drawing from some of the most pivotal points in his life, Steve Jobs, chief executive officer and co-founder of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios, urged graduates to pursue their dreams and see the opportunities in life's setbacks-- including death itself-- at Stanford University's 114th Commencement on Sunday in Stanford Stadium. Read the transcript of the speech  here .

Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch, who was dying of pancreatic cancer, gave his last lecture at the university Sept. 18, 2007, before a packed McConomy Auditorium. In his moving talk, "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams," Pausch talked about his lessons learned and gave advice to students on how to achieve their own career and personal goals. For more, visit Lecture Home Page on Carnegie Mellon University or The Last Lecture .

This is one of the BEST videos I have ever watched. Discrimination is the worst form of social cancer and unfortunately all it takes is an unquestioned and unreasoned assumption or perception of something or someone. And what a way to explain the feeling of being discriminated by making them go through it. What an inspiring and life changing lesson.        It is about an Iowa schoolteacher who, the day after Martin Luther King Jr. was murdered in 1968, gave her third-grade students a first-hand experience in the meaning of discrimination. This is the story of what she taught the children, and the impact that lesson had on their lives.  -- A Class Divided (PBS, Frontline) Watch all 5 chapters of the video, access the transcript and learn more about it here on the Program Page on PBS . Please do share the link and Spread the message. There is no better link that you can ever share with a friend, family and most importantly your kids.

A couple of weeks back, one of  my friends admonished me that my blog design doesn’t reflect my personality as he see it.  So I asked him, if he had to design a theme that fits me, how would he go about it.  Here it is.  Vibrant, musical and personal. I loved it. It is quite a refreshing look. And its quite thrilling as well to see exactly how your friends see you. He used various features available in existing Blogger templates, more specifically  cool and lovely Google Web Fonts and configured my blog to look more vibrant and more personal than my previous version. Don’t wait. Ask your friends to express in pictures, music,  characters or in designs how do they see you. You will be totally blown away.

Check out this amazing TED Talk: Arvind Gupta: Turning trash into toys for learning http://www.ted.com/talks/arvind_gupta_turning_trash_into_toys_for_learning.html